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The University of Michigan wants to help students learn to separate trustworthy news from propaganda.
It's "fighting back against fake news," says an announcement of a course coming next semester:
A marked increase in the online dissemination of intentionally false information has led librarians to join with campus partners at U-M's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts to create a class aimed at helping students develop better critical evaluation skills of news items.
The one-credit course, called "Fake News, Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction," will be available to students starting in fall 2017.
"Recent concerns about 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' has us looking for ways to expand our professional efforts to help students become more critical and reflective information consumers," said Laurie Alexander, associate university librarian for learning and teaching. . . . We hope to further promote and advance information literacy so that students learn to approach information with a critical and questioning mind."
In addition to focusing on traditional and new forms of journalism, the class will prompt students to "assess how their social media feeds influence their views," a news release says. Participants will be asked to "make a plan to adjust those feeds to improve their understanding of the world around them."
To help them become wiser news consumers, students will "be challenged to confront their own biases" and "consider how their opinions, and the opinions of others, can affect the interpretation of news items."
